Recently some clever chap managed to stream his PlayStation 4 to his PC so he could remote play games on it. Cue much tutting form the internet and moaning that one persion has managed to do it, and Xbox One can do it, and Sony are rubbish. Blah blah blah.
Sony have now previewed the next features coming to PS4 firmware update 3.50, which will be going in to beta very soon, and it includes remote play on PC and Mac along with integration with Daily Motion and some handy tweaks including the ability to appear offline. Here are the key features:
- Friend Online Notification – Want to know the moment your friends come online? With this update, you can, as we’ve added an option to be notified when members of your friends list sign in on the network. Notifications can be tailored to certain friends.
- Appear Offline – Sometimes you want to play a game or watch a movie without being interrupted. Now it’s easier to go incognito as we’ve added the option to appear offline. You can designate if you would like to appear offline when you log-in or at any time from your Profile or the Quick Menu.
- User Scheduled Event – Now it’s easier to organise a game session. We’ve added the ability to schedule a future gameplay session with your friends on the system. When your event starts, users who registered for the event will automatically be added to a party so you can start playing right away.
- Remote Play (PC/Mac) – We’re bringing PS4 Remote Play to Windows PC and Mac. This feature won’t be available to test in the beta, but you can look forward to it soon.
- Dailymotion, new service partner in Share feature – Dailymotion, an additional live streaming service, will become available for PS4 users to enhance their broadcast experience. Like other live streaming services available on PS4, users will enjoy the following features: Activity Feed, What’s New Broadcast Info Tile, Live Detail and Live from PlayStation.
Source: EU PS Blog
Youles
Appear offline and User Scheduled Events will be good. You can’t believe the former was never introduced on PS3. Come one Sony, it’s 2016, where have you been?
I love the idea of Remote Play – it wasn’t bad on Vita, worse on PS TV though. So long as input lag exists it just won’t be something I use – unless it’s for a strategy game like Hitman GO, or something like a TellTale game.
tonyyeb
Yeah remote play was poor on the PS TV I bought so it went back. My Vita is pretty decent and recently I revisited the hacked version for Android on my Nexus 5 which works very well too. Even been playing The Golf Club over 3G!!
da_siz
Have to disagree to an extent in regards to PSTV. Over wifi it sucks, but if you have a wired connection it isn’t too bad (for me anyways). Having said that certain games work better than others. Fifa wasn’t great, but recently played tomb raider, darksiders and Need for speed rivals and they were fine.
Youles
Sadly not for me, I have both PS TV and PS4 wired via Ethernet using those adapters that use the homes’ power sockets, and it’s still not good enough. :( To be fair I haven’t tried it for a while, so perhaps it’s improved with updates.
Oh yeah, I recall seeing your screenshot of The Golf Club Tony – good that it works for you, and over 3G is impressive!
da_siz
Its definitely improved since the update included 60fps. I do think it will still depend on the type of game being played.
Whilst i don’t use it all the time, i do find it very useful, such a pain taking the ps4 between rooms
Youles
Thanks, I may well give it another go then since the update – good to know, cheers.
ron_mcphatty
I’m in the same boat Youles, remote play is poor on TV but excellent on Vita. My mate showed me remote play on his Experia using a second account to only display the screen, the controller is paired with the console so same room remote play works with almost no lag, better than using the vita!
DividSmythe
I can say different to that. I’ve used 3 different devices and dependent on the game there usually is lag. Not games have and I’m currently using Xperia Z5 premium and dual band Wi-Fi.
ron_mcphatty
Oh right, bugger. I’ll calm my excitement then, remote play really is hit and miss.
tonyyeb
As I tweeted earlier looking at the release notes this could be the best / most feature packed update yet. Lots of stuff people have been asking for although folders would’ve kept quite a few people happy too.
Glad you can tailor friend sign in notification to certain people.
tactical20
I just want folders, trophy sorting and being able to turn off trophy screenshots. All very simple things really.
rSp8
Errr…. you can turn off trophy screenshots.I think you do it under the share settings menu.
tactical20
Will investigate. You certainly never used to be able to.
Matthijs
Very happy about this! Looking forward to using my laptop and iMac for remote play. Praying for proper DS4 support
TSBonyman
Online notification/appear offline seems to have been absent too long but it’s good to see them expanding on the remote play.
Now if only we could have folders and the option to remove all those demos/ps plus games/betas etc from our library permanently.
MrYd
So, out of all the things they could possibly have added that would be useful, they’ve done absolutely bugger all?
Hopefully they’ll have the “friend online notification” turned off by default. That just drives me mad. Maybe I’ve just got friends with crap internet connections, but when someone is coming online every 30 seconds, I start to swear and demand new friends.
Could we not have had folders? Or someway to get rid of all the crap that’s clogging up the library? And support for external harddrives? And a pony? (Although I suspect that one won’t happen yet, and they’ll need more of the usual updates to make it more stable. For the pony. See what I did there?)
tactical20
External hard drive would be so good. I can’t be bothered to upgrade the internal one, because it’d still fill up far too quickly. 500gb is enough for about a quarter of my PS4 games. Just need a 5tb external one or something.
Tuffcub
I dont think you’ll every get external hard drive support, not for saving games on anyway. Too much risk of piracy.
Avenger
I’m not too sure about the piracy thing anymore. Xbox One allows external HDDs (tbf it needs it because the internal can’t be easily changed), but even Steam allows it on PC as well.
leeroye
Friend Online Notification
Well its about time!!!